February 06, 2012

Design by Cthulhu

An unnaturally uniformly straight
series of yellow outlines lay across the width of the computer
monitor looking like the handiwork of a prolific serial killer with
obsessive compulsive disorder. Outlines marking not the location of
the dead but the future site of a bank of relays. Each socket
identical, shoulder to shoulder at an interval of 0.200 inches or 200
mils in the X axis. Each one exactly 6 inches North of the Holy
Origin in the far lower left corner of a printed circuit board yet to
be. The relays will be born by robot midwives into this rectangular
two dimensional world. A world made by robots from fiberglass and
copper protected by the familiar green solder mask ubiquitous to
electronics everywhere. A virtual world created in software that
will become real when I email the CAD files to the fabricator with a
credit card number.

Each of the relay contacts fits into a
50 mil diameter hole. The steadfast primary color blue is assigned
for the virtual display of holes. The holes are surrounded with
perfectly centered copper disks known as pads on the top and bottom
surfaces. Green for top copper and red for bottom. The pads have a
good Christian diameter of 100 mils and every contact lies on X-Y
coordinates that are wholesome faithful numbers ending with at least
two zeros.

When a relay is released from duty an
invisible predatory terror of magnetic energy stored in the relay
coil goes hunting for a fragile semiconductor to destroy. A rank of
diodes stands guard 500 mils North of the relays waiting to confront
this terror. Each one squarely centered on his assigned relay. A
straight and true uniform series North-South lines of top copper 10
mils wide in green marry the diodes to the relays.

With a keystroke the virtual world view
is transmuted as with x-ray vision to make the bottom appear to be on
top. A thick red conductor precisely centered on designated relay
contact hole centers and 75 mils wide stretches left and right the
entire width of the monitor carrying power to each of the relay
armatures. It is the law of this land that top copper conductors
travel North and South while bottom copper roads lead East and West.

It is Monday morning and I am hiding
amongst straight laced, roundly numbered, pious, familiar friends in
a finished section of the board. Not yet ready to face the
unfinished anarchy nearby. At these coordinates with substantial
zoom the chaotic lines are safely masked from view, their demonic
chants unheard.

Over there, beyond this narrow view, is
a feral gang of digital signals that burrow into the board with 13
mil holes. An odd number. A prime number mandated by the
fabricators smallest drill. A malignant unlucky number that when
blessed with a virtuous 30 mil pad the hole defiles the pad. A
melding of the two creates a demon spawn offspring 8.5 mil
asymmetrical copper ring. There is no amount of zoom that permits
the software to display the exact center of these evil pits of
oddness. I am certain the fabrication company is a co-conspirator in
a vast sinister plot.

These digital parasites attack the
vulnerable marrow of the board. They spread their diseases on the
internal layers formed by sandwiched laminates of copper and
fiberglass below the surface. The deep tumors grow on 45 degree
angles in a feeble attempt to appear benign. They sneak underneath
unsuspecting analog circuits on the surface injecting ghostly voltage
echos of tortured hexadecimal screams. The software renders these
internal copper layers with colors unseeable by eyes of the male
gender. Foreign colors lurking in the slums of the color wheel,
indigo, mauve.

Like an old neighborhood in the process
of going bad the 45 degree angles look fine at first glance. On high
zoom the ragged pixelated edges of the copper traces can be seen.
The spacing between the traces looks uniform but the numbers are the
bastard offspring of the square root of two, 14.14 mils and his
retarded nephew 7.07

The last vestiges of civilization are
swept away at the edge of the world. The mauves and indigos burst
out onto the surface like tentacles of a monster from the fourth
dimension. The perpendicular order of the reds and greens is
disrupted and all traces on all layers are twisted into irrational
angles. Angles the software can not display. Angles that would
drive you insane if you saw them. The final destination is a portal
to another world, a portal guarded by an alien metric connector, with
39.37008 mil holes at an interval of 157.08431